Monday, February 16, 2004

Conflict: The Norm of Current Civilization Barry Carter writes: When we look at the underlying norms and thinking that employment and our entire Industrial Age systems rest upon, we find a lose/win norm. The controlled economy and other Industrial Age systems were not the start of lose/win norms and systems. Serfdom, slavery and monarchy of the Agricultural Age were also based upon win/lose norms and prior to this so to was tribal life and customs. Controlled economies are merely the latest in a series of perhaps progressively improving win/lose systems. The inherent lose/win nature of slavery and serfdom is self-evident, however, how is a controlled economy inherently a lose/win system? Any economy that must be controlled to maintain order is one based upon fear not love. The former Soviet Union controlled its economy because it feared what free humans would do without control, likewise so do companies. Only systems and actions that come from a love paradigm can be win-win. Actions and systems from an authoritarian control or fear paradigm are inherently based upon win/lose and scarcity. The heart of the controlled economy is its lose/win compensation system. Controlled economies operate based upon standardized compensation – salaries and wages. Regardless of the value one adds the controlled economy pays the same within a relatively narrow range. With standardized compensation the more you make the less the organization makes and vise-versa. I must lose in order for you to win and vise-versa. The controlled economy is based upon adversarial human relationships. At a tangible level we see a lose/win system as CEO's salaries explode while they layoff record numbers of people. Managers and the company makes more by holding down wages and salaries; the more the employee makes the less the company makes and vise-versa. The more vacation and benefits the employee gets the more it cost the company. There is also lose/win competition for limited positions. The primary job of most managers is to get more work out of people for less money. Unions who represent employees (a check and balance bureaucracy) have the job of getting more money and benefits for employee at the owner’s expense. Externally controlled economies compete with other controlled economies for survival, customers, growth, resources and prestige. (02/16/04) Kerry and Vietnam Terence R. Wilken writes: I served a year in Vietnam.  It took me over 30 years to be able to talk about the fact that I was there, and about my experiences.  I truly understand those that still cannot face what they experienced.  Now all of that is coming out with the political situation.  It makes me want to ask some questions. Why is John Kerry now a War hero?  I can assure you that he was not a hero when he returned from service.  There were no hero's.  Wearing a uniform in this country  in 1970 was not the "in" thing to do.  I had to wear my uniform in order to have the military pay for my air fare.  I can assure you that I would have given anything for some air miles back then. Is John Kerry a War hero because he protested the war when he returned?  Maybe politics entered into his thinking when he returned from Vietnam.  Even though my family, and everyone that I knew were against the War, protesting was the last thing that I would have done.  I think that this is true of a lot of other veterans of this War (conflict). Now to my feelings on George Bush.  I was once asked if I had any bad feelings about the men that served in the National Guard, and did not go to Vietnam.  My answer then and now, is NO!  I absolutely harbored no bad feelings.  I did not care if they ever showed up for duty. What occurred over 30 years ago should not be a part of who our next President should be.  The Vietnam War was a political event over 30 years ago, and it caused a lot of bad feelings on both sides of the issue.  It also affected the ones that served.  It certainly does not belong as part of today's political strategy. (02/16/04) Improving Human Vaccines BBC Health -- A delayed-release system could help produce more effective vaccines against a number of diseases, including cancer. Scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology encased their "DNA vaccines" in biodegradeable spheres. They do not break down and release the vaccine until they are carried to key locations such as the lymph nodes. The researchers, writing in the journal Nature Materials, say it should mean a far more powerful vaccine - which might be able to target tumours. DNA vaccines, which instead of a whole virus contain fragments of genetic material from a virus or bacteria. Doctors see them as a modern alternative to traditional vaccines, possibly working against a wide variety of illnesses with fewer side-effects. It is possible that they could deliver a life-long immunity to certain infections which have a vaccine, but only one which gives a few year's protection. Instead of giving the patient a dose of dead viruses, or weakened live viruses, in order to train the immune system to tackle the real thing in the event of a genuine infection, the DNA sections are injected into human cells. They cell's machinery uses this DNA information to start churning out body chemicals specific to the virus - and it is these which are picked up by the immune system. When a real infection happens, the same proteins are produced, and the immune system detects this and launches an attack that should stop the invading organism in its tracks. However, the machinery of the immune system is complex - and it is important that these DNA fragments make it back to the lymph nodes so that the correct immune cells can be generated. If this does not happen, these proteins may trigger an unwelcome response in immune system cells outside the lymph nodes - and actually make the immune system downgrade the potential threat they pose, meaning the vaccine will not work properly. The MIT researchers aimed to find a way to delay exposing the immune system to their vaccine-generated proteins until they have been carried back into the lymph nodes. They use a biodegradeable polymer sphere which is just the right size to be picked up by immune cells called dendritic cells, whose role is to grab a potential threat - be it bacterium or virus, then move back to the lymph nodes where it can be used as the basis for a full immune response. (02/16/04) Hubble Too Valuable to Abandon BBC Science -- The farthest object in the Universe yet detected has been seen by scientists using the Hubble and Keck telescopes. It is so distant its light must have set out when the Universe was just 750m years old to reach the Earth now. Details of the discovery were revealed by a team of astrophysicists from the California Institute of Technology. They said the work underlined again the remarkable capabilities of Hubble and called on Nasa to reverse its decision to stop servicing the telescope. The US space agency has confirmed it will not send another shuttle to upgrade the space telescope, which probably means Hubble has no more than three years of full observations ahead of it. "We need Hubble ... we could not have made this discovery without it," said Caltech's Richard Ellis, who was explaining his institute's latest work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science here in Washington State. "One of the instruments that would be placed on the telescope is a new infrared camera which would be perfect for the work we want to do. "Many of us hope the decision to abandon further visits to Hubble will be examined very carefully because the scientific potential is very great." The new object was first seen in a series of observations of a cluster of galaxies known as Abell 2218, conducted with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed on its last servicing mission. The object is not in the cluster but situated a long way behind it. Abell 2218 was simply used as a "gravitational lens" - a massive foreground object that can bend and magnify the light of objects much further away. Gravitational lensing is a remarkable astronomical trick, first predicted by Einstein, that allows scientists to probe regions of the Universe that are estimated to be 13bn light-years away - to look back in time to when some of the very first stars were shining. (02/16/04) The Value of Cloning BBC Science -- They are bright-eyed, bouncy and very friendly. The world's first mule clones are the product of a $1m scientific programme - and their creator Gordon Woods is very keen that you should check out "the boys".  Idaho Gem, Utah Pioneer and Idaho Star enjoy getting out," the research veterinarian tells his audience. "I'd like you to ask yourself if you think these are healthy animals. Every person who asks that question draws the same conclusion - they are." The clones took centre stage here on Sunday at the world's largest general science conference. ... He told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that his cloned mules came about because calcium concentrations were raised at key stages in the process of manipulating the animals' egg cells.  This built on work that had shown calcium concentrations are a key factor in regulating cell activity, and that lower than expected levels inside equine cells may have contributed to the poor success of in vitro fertilisation efforts in horses. Dr Woods says this knowledge is now being turned on humans in whom a decrease in intracellular calcium could possibly bring about a beneficial response in certain diseases such as diabetes and prostate cancer.   "There is an electrifying similarity between rapidly dividing cancer cells and rapidly diving embryo cells. Both cell divisions are regulated by intracellular calcium. "From a comparative standpoint, cancer mortality is 24% in humans - it's only 8% in horses. Prostate cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer in men; not once has prostate cancer been identified in stallions." "These diseases are characterised by abnormally high intracellular calcium," Dr Woods told the BBC. "In marked contrast to horses, in which we propose their cell activity is below an optimal level, in certain diseased humans we propose their cell activity is above an optimal level.  The key is to discover which chemicals regulate intracellular calcium in humans."  (02/16/04) Scientists Call for Protection of Coral BBC Environment -- More than 1,100 marine scientists have signed a statement calling on the UN and world governments to stop the destruction of deep-sea corals. The researchers want a moratorium on the use of the heavy trawling gear that gouges coral and sponges from the ocean bottom in search of valuable fish. Some of the coral fields will contain thousands of species and are sometimes called the "rainforests of the deep". "Bottom trawling is like fishing with bulldozers," said expert Elliot Norse. "It's devastatingly efficient in one sense; it's a way to get fish relatively easily and painlessly, if you don't mind killing all of the life on the bottom to catch them," the president of the US Marine Conservation Biology Institute told the BBC. The gear is huge. Nets are armed with steel weights or heavy rollers and destroy everything in their path. At the cold depths of one to two kilometres, the growth rates of all organisms are incredibly slow and the coral fields have little chance to re-establish themselves. Some of the corals resemble trees - they can be up to 10 metres tall - and some specimens have been found to be almost 2,000 years old. "They are sources of future medicines, they are recorders of global climate change because they live so long, and they provide habitat for many other species including some really important commercial fish," says Dr Norse. "They are also exquisitely beautiful organisms." It is the big and valuable species - cod, orange roughy, armorhead, grenadier and Chilean seabass - that live among the coral that draw the trawlers. But these fish species, too, cannot sustain heavy losses. (02/16/04) 5:55:50 AM

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